Lawrence Toppman

The movie fails the credibility test right here. As those of us who were social rejects in high school know, the two qualities that would defeat any prom candidate are extra weight and a blotchy complexion. Laney has porcelain skin and a sveltely curvaceous figure, so she's a candidate for prom royalty. [29 Jan 1999, p.6E]

The credits say DiNorscio, who died during filming in 2004, never informed on anyone. But is that such a great thing? If you live in a sewer, is it so terrible to be a rat?

The picture should satisfy both diehard fans, who liked the plotting and interaction of early Bond films, and "Die Hard" fans, who prefer Bond shaken and stirred by massive explosions, vehicular crashes and gunplay befitting a Central American revolution.

Its uniqueness lies in its juxtaposition of happy faces and unhappy realities, of fleeting expressions of art and culture undone by daily brutality.

The plot of "Nights" will occupy only 10 or 12 brain cells.

The characters are so conventional that the movie has nowhere interesting to go, even when a corpse complicates affairs.

Brosnan has toughened up emotionally for his second outing. He's been teamed with Asian action star Michelle Yeoh as Chinese agent Wai Lin, and he's been given a script that provides more fun than the lethargic "GoldenEye." [19 Dec 1997, p.11E]

Isn't satisfying or surprising. It doesn't even make sense from scene to scene.

Darabont and Sloane stumble consistently and fall into the abyss.

Except for Sanaa Lathan, who sears the screen in a brief appearance, director Carl Franklin and his cast seem to realize they're making a second-tier thriller.

Sometimes seems longer than a rainy Super Bowl.

You'll have to swallow this gooey confection whole or spit it out after the first couple of bites.

This little piggy's gone to market, and he isn't coming back. Not to suggest the sequel lacks heart or an uplifting message. It has both. But they've been subsumed in slapstick clowning and the introduction of characters with no reason to exist, other than to line the shelves of toy stores. [27 Nov 1998, p.6D]

If you're fond of wigs, you may be in heaven. If you're more interested in Whigs, you may wish the movie had dug deeper under the lovely powdered surface of Lady Georgiana Spencer.

The movie, first preposterously entertaining and then just preposterous, makes James Bond films look as logical as Euclidean geometry.

A mind-numbing carnival of violence.

He (Murphy) can't make chicken a la king from the chicken manure supplied by the writers.

Besides its title, the movie has retained the book's outline...But the film throws away the point of the book completely.

It's hard to fault a script that keeps finding new dilemmas for characters and rewards attentive viewers with in-jokes.

Keeps its sense of humor while dealing with serious issues.

It falls back on straightforward horror tactics, executed competently but without flair. It takes liberties with the second half of the book, including one big change that will leave fans of the novel growling with disbelief and disapproval.

Qualifies as a solid double, maybe a triple.

A gently pleasing if mostly undramatic picture.

This frantic scrambling to create a credible fantasy is typical of the script by Aline Brosh McKenna and Robert Harling, which whips the "opposites attract" recipe into a souffl? that never rises.

Roberts, perhaps the nation's most fresh-faced actress five or six years ago, now seems to be a pair of tear ducts mounted atop a thousand-watt smile. Whether anything is going on behind that assembly remains to be seen, but there's not much proof here. [4 Aug 1995, p.1F]

The effect is as potent as a straight right to the solar plexus.

Just when the story reaches its idiotic nadir, Neil (Diamond) shows up to save the day with a song and a smile.

It's handsomely shot, acted with fervor and reasonably subtle in delivering its message:

It's the most claustrophobic, airless movie of the year, a menage a quatre among unstable, manipulative, needy people who prey on each other like sharks at a feeding frenzy of the emotions.

The film robs mermaids of everything exotic and remarkable about them in mythology.

Is Josh Hartnett attracted to cinematic bombs, or do movies merely self-destruct once he signs on as the leading man?

A dark comedy that's as emotionally honest as any picture of 2002.

The new film, superficial and chaotic, delivers a rough sense of place, a reasonable number of skateboard thrills and very little character development or story.

It's the chemistry between the stars that makes the film stand out in a drab spring.

Really should have been made 60 years ago. It would have been timelier, with its tale of life in the remote north of that country during World War II. The juicy overacting, stereotypes and dramatic exaggerations would have been more in keeping with the style of the Golden Age of Hollywood.

Universal Studios has unloaded its entire monster catalog in this movie, which is aimed at people with the attention span of a kindergartner. Shreds of coherence and character have been sacrificed to fangs and fisticuffs at every chance.

An articulate plea to Westerners not to repeat these terrible sins of omission.

Far be it from me to spoil the secret, but I will say this: The last reel should've been sent straight to the city dump.

The mediocre original, hampered by a saccharine plot and unconvincing reversals of character, earned lots of money but few plaudits. Now comes Ice Age: The Meltdown, a sequel with more humor, topicality, intelligence and appeal.

When the movie becomes pure fantasy, it's impossible to swallow. (No landlord rents an apartment to a 12-year-old with no adult in sight.)

Thirty minutes into Be Kind Rewind, you may wonder what you're doing in the theater. Sixty minutes into it, if you have stayed, you will know.

Performances are rather beside the point in a movie where dogs carry the acting burden, but Perabo is especially bland.

It's encouraging to see a nation so aware of its public image and defensive about its military decisions examine a dark day in its history.

Harden and Tierney waste performances of moderate complexity, Baranski adds her usual brand of silky sarcasm and Rip Torn provides a welcome presence as Cole's jolly campaign manager.

Represents everything that over-budgeted Hollywood can possibly get wrong in a period piece: It feels both long and slow, it's unfocused and self-contradictory, its generic characters are played too broadly, it's anachronistic..

The rest of this well-intentioned picture never reaches (Washington's) level of subtlety and intensity.

Perhaps the director should make only silent movies. Scenes where characters communicate via eyes and body language usually work here, even if we don't know exactly what's going on.

A documentary that's as chaotic, rude and funny as the band could be.

It's a pleasant but insubstantial excuse for a film.

Yet the whole thing is so generic, so been-there-before, that I spent most of it asking myself nitpicking questions. To wit:

Often powerful, though presented throughout with British understatement.

In an elemental way, though, the film always works. The acting can be basic, a cross between Bollywood directness and Western nuance, but it has weight.

Enchanted charmingly reworks all the old favorites while incorporating fresh twists of its own.

It's neither dull nor stimulating, neither off-putting nor engaging.

After five minutes, Christopher Walken vanishes. We wait vainly for the next 90 minutes for someone, anyone to bring that kind of danger, unpredictability and vitality to a story as drab as army fatigues.

Jackson had the vision, persistence, insight and patience for this mighty job, plus the smarts to shape stage veterans and overlooked film actors into a seamless cast. He's made himself as immortal as a movie director can be.

All that matters is that emotions be real, and so they are: wracking grief, harrowing madness, unquenchable hate. Composers have tried and failed to turn "Lear" into a workable opera, but Kurosawa has found the visual equivalent. Yet the last image of a man, solitary and silent, is more haunting than all the destruction. [10 Aug 2001, p.7E]

Vertical Limit is like riding a roller coaster for two hours. First it's frighteningly exciting. Then it's mind-numbing

It'll preach mainly to the choir - lazy thinkers won't attend, despite George Clooney's attachment as director and actor - but maybe it'll wake a few sleepers.

What makes Blade 2 marginally better than "Blade," especially if you thought the first was a hollow spectacle? It has a plot.

The picture feels like an entertaining short story, competently executed at undue length, and that's its origin.

Greene's words haunt us like a prophecy from half a century and half a world away.

The Farrellys have always danced along the tightrope between funny-disgusting and just plain gross in "There's Something About Mary" and "Shallow Hal." If the ratio was about 50-50 at the best of times, it's now 30-70 in favor of crassness.

Gandolfini's fans expect something quirky whenever he shows up, and they'll get what they've bargained for.

Inside Moonlight Mile, an honest and heartbreakingly true movie is struggling to get out.

There are usually good reasons why a movie gets shelved for more than a year, however well-acted it may be and however well-meaning its message. Many are on view in Penelope.

Freeman's understated, deeply-felt acting tops a passel of good performances. [25 Dec 1998, p.7E]

This is one of the increasingly rare Hollywood films that treat people in middle age as though their feelings were just as intense and their needs just as valid as those of people half their age.

I don't know if Nispel and Scott Kosar, who make their feature film debuts here, are the worst director and writer in the world, though they might well represent the United States if anyone holds a competition. I do know they deliver a total of zero laughs, scares or surprises in this remake of the infamously creepy 1974 picture.

Gripping but gap-filled Seven Pounds will have half your brain asking "How could this be?" and the other half saying, "Shut up and go along for the ride!" Listen to the latter voice.

Every era gets the Robin Hood it needs…Now director Ridley Scott and writer Brian Helgeland have given us an intelligent, layered story suited to our grim, patience-trying times.

While the 29 pages of his (Van Allsburg's) mini-classic would have made a superb half-hour TV special, Zemeckis and writer William Broyles Jr. have created a steroidal monster with a heart about one size too small.

Depp gives yet another introspective, slightly mopey performance -- Graham never begins to act (and never has begun, as far as I know). But they're surrounded by an authentic, first-rate English cast.

The only interesting character is the dragon, who grows from an adorably dependent baby to a protective, intelligent adult voiced by Rachel Weisz.

Vardalos is of Greek ancestry, which makes stereotyping permissible: She can tease Greeks, just as Italians can safely mock Italians or Jews can poke fun at Jews. But isn't it demeaning to reduce your heritage to clich?s?

If you're going to serve up a half-baked idea, you might as well have Sigourney Weaver do the cooking.

If your senses haven't been dulled by slasher films and gorefests, if you're a connoisseur of psychological horror, this is your ticket.

One dazzling (if overlong) bridge: technologically advanced, brilliantly designed, spectacularly executed, solid as steel in its unspectacular elements. But unlike its 1999 predecessor, this is a movie that nobody but avid video gamers and motorcyclists needs to see more than once.

Its main pleasure lies in watching Bush thaw under gentle emotional heat applied by the few people who haven't given up on him.

A slow, grim, atmospheric but virtually plotless look at a blank-faced loner who is obsessed with his work, has no friends except for one woman inexplicably attached to him, and ends up making those around him miserable.

Ryder puts fire into both Abigail's pants and her belly, aided by makeup that makes her seem as much victim as victimizer. [20 Dec 1996, p.1E]

Except for moments of labored symbolism and a too cozy ending, the movie stays sharply focused on its well-chosen targets.

The funniest, crassest, wildest, most musical, most satirical and most scatological of the Powers trilogy. And you get to watch Britney Spears' head explode. What more could you want?

Starts as sweetly impossible and ends as impossibly sweet.

A sometimes clever, sometimes clumsy movie.

It's cheerful nonsense from blithe beginning to obvious end.

If you've never heard his voice, this is your chance, and you should take it.

The result is an odd mix of honesty and hokum that pilots a course toward greatness before settling into a somewhat lower orbit.

Performances keep the film afloat and focused whenever it threatens to drift. Deschanel, Harris and Warner are ideally cast. You might not think Ferrell would be, but he gives a different performance than I've seen from him.

A punch-drunk lightweight. Inside the ring, it lands some forceful punches. Outside the ring, it stumbles around, swinging wildly at nothing, until it collapses.

Writer-director Barry Levinson leaned on Robin Williams the way a one-ring circus relies on its lone acrobat. So they're jointly responsible for the film's utter failure.

Confidence is "The Sting" without period appeal, humor, the charisma of Robert Redford or Paul Newman and the quietly seething villainy of Robert Shaw.

Crowe likes to work with large ensembles...But he doesn't know when we've had enough, however interesting they all may be; he's like a guy who decorates a Christmas tree with so many ornaments that you can't see the foliage.

By the way, the other thing that keeps Transamerica from being a mainstream movie is its obsession with penises: showing them, talking about them, placing us in bathrooms and trailers when they're in use.

It delivers cop-genre thrills at the pace required and reminds us Omar Epps is a star in the making.

The irony is, this family isn't mismatched: All six bickering characters are connected by empathy as well as blood, and we wait for them to figure that out.

The film takes place half in English, half in French. The chilly, responsibility-laden world of British society contrasts with the sunny, relaxed quality of life in fare-thee-well France. If these seem like cliches, Ozon and Bernheim exploit them so adroitly that they never become stale.

Birth, which should never have been conceived, is obscure in every way: visually, philosophically and psychologically.

Just a great, empty wind machine.

It offers razor-sharp editing, first-rate performances, direction that yields maximum emotional effect and a flabby, unconvincing screenplay.

Production values are acceptable in the Klasky Csupo vein. If you know that company, you're prepared for animation that isn't conventionally attractive: flat backgrounds, characters with big heads, pushed-in faces and beanpole limbs.

Exactly the right length. That sounds like faint praise, but isn't it rare? Many movies drag past the points where they should stop; others end abruptly, leaving you to wonder at things unexplained or unconcluded.

Wheeler and director Lasse Hallstrom don't want us to take anything too seriously.

Someone Like You is from Hollywood's bottomless box of cliches.

Performances are simple and complementary, and Hidalgo's potential death scene sustains suspense as much as is equinely possible.

It's a passably made, grittily acted slice of life in Texas that veers not an inch from the norm for this sort of picture.

A long, slow pity party full of characters who constantly bemoan their fate while telling other people not to pity themselves.

The story's so sloppy that it contradicts itself constantly.

A movie for people fascinated by toilets and Sabbath.

Melvin Van Peebles wrote and directed the biting "Don't Play Us Cheap" 30 years ago to complain about racial stereotyping in films. But Hollywood never listened. It kept playing African -Americans cheap in mainstream comedies, whether the directors were white or black. Deliver Us From Eva -- is one of the worst recent offenders.

Punch-Drunk Love buries a terrific performance by Adam Sandler under a heap of faux cleverness, meaningless symbolism and irritating mannerisms.

It's got a satisfyingly brisk rhythm and two appealing performances by Brendan Gleeson and Peter MacDonald as good-natured ex-cons. But despite the brogues of their bosses, the tough-guy atmosphere is pleasantly old-hat. [10 July 1998, p.12E]

Man on Fire is as ludicrous as "John Q," "Virtuosity" and "Out of Time," yet substantially more violent, artificial, self-conscious and dull.

The plot is thin: You'll guess the villain early, then pick holes in story construction. But Black's ear for mock-noir speeches doesn't fail him, and he gleefully parodies the chase scenes that dominated his action movies.

Long, utterly predictable and always bland.

There's nothing wrong with Simpson's performance that a head transplant wouldn't cure, and the grinning Reynolds looks Botoxed into immobility.

Cash made some untamed, exhilarating sounds in its formative days. Walk the Line is strongest when it shows him in love with either his music or his muse.

The worst horror sequel of this or many another summer.

Errors in logic will delight the attentive.

It plucks ceaselessly at our heartstrings to play a sad song indeed.

The chorus backs the soloists powerfully, and they are as fresh as the rest of the film: fat and fit, homely and handsome, young gods and old codgers – in short, people you might really see in Greece. Reality in a musical? That alone makes it worth your open-eared attention.

As Disney-fied as "Pinocchio," barely challenging the images Americans have treasured for 150 years.

Far too clever for its own good.

The movie satisfies a basic need to see pageantry, pomp and pennants flying over the Cornish countryside. But if you're expecting a story that sticks to the Arthurian legend, this is Scam-a-lot. [07 Jul 1995, p.1F]

The whole thing seems to have been faked up for our amusement, like a circus freak show.

Blanchett is riveting.

The two leads don't have sexual chemistry together, but that's part of the point.

What could have been an all-occasion Hallmark card turns out to be an emotionally genuine love letter to a young man who transformed the town of Anderson, S.C., in the 1970s.

Beyond the philosophizing, Mean Girls is a standard collection of low comic jokes.

They've never been farther into outer space than in The Big Lebowski. Fans (myself included) may cackle at absurd situations and in-jokes. But director Joel and producer Ethan, who write together, have never made so much clamorous ado about nothing. [6 March 1998, p.7E]

This combination of tightly controlled farce and gross-out comedy works unexpectedly well, until the filmmakers lose their nerve at last and settle for cozy homilies. Still, four-fifths of a rarity is about twice as much as studios deliver nowadays.

The rabbits, foolishly introduced to a land that couldn't support them as they bred and dispersed, are symbols of the English: ravenous, unheeding, ineradicable and a constant threat to the native way of life.

The results have the Coens' usual tartness most of the way, before turning soft and gooey at the center.

Can be unbearably moving or annoyingly mawkish, sometimes in the same scene.

Since there can be no suspense, the point is to enjoy the hewing of limbs and the severing of necks, to delight in chopped-off fingers and gouged-out eyes. The title characters are embodiments of utter evil, right?

Ronan, however, transcends the script. She's innocent yet wise, gentle yet forceful. She's the one thing in this picture that shows how great a movie The Lovely Bones might have been, had the people who made it believed in the book with all their hearts.

It really gets gloomy.

The pleasure comes from watching the clever rodents do their stuff. Computerized images have been kept to a minimum, and real animals provide most of the film's atmosphere.

It's the cheapest looking, least exciting, least funny Chan project I've ever seen.

I never thought I'd crack up watching a family mourn the death of a beloved daughter. But I've never seen a film quite like The Host, and that's far from the most bizarre thing in it.

This is a game of numbers, not personalities, and a shrewd man wants the bigger numbers on his side when historians pick up their pens.

Writer-director Theodore Witcher fills his debut with jazz-cool atmosphere. He's got a fresh-faced but mature cast: Nia Long, Larenz Tate, Isaiah Washington. But once he's staked out the territory, he falls back into the most conventional kind of storytelling. [14 Mar 1997, p.4E]

Two things keep the film off Disney's top shelf. First, Naveen is a dull hero; his good-natured vanity isn't engaging until late in the story. Second, Newman's songs are less bland than usual but no more memorable.

Carrey rolls his eyes and waggles his arms, and Leoni keeps up with him while pushing less hard. He externalizes, she internalizes, and the balance works as it might in a good marriage.

As usual, Almodovar finds unusual camera angles to break up the straightforward storytelling. But for the first time I recall, not a single male character is crucial to his story, and no actor has a leading role. You won't miss them.

The energy never lets up, and two committed, unfussy leading actors are an improvement over other summer flicks.

Most of the movie feels like a loose, sometimes improvised lark among friends.

A conventionally violent, do-or-die ending on such an unconventional movie.

There is indeed a murder - two of them, in fact - and the movie proceeds strictly by the numbers laid down long ago in some by-the-book Hollywood writing class.

One of the rare action films that needed to be longer. Then changes in mood wouldn't be so abrupt, and director Peter Berg and writers Vincent Ngo and Vince Gilligan would've had more time to reveal things we want to know.

Ang Lee adds to the mythology with the sweet, gentle Taking Woodstock.

So wild an approach demands straightforward performances that don't draw attention to themselves, and that's what the actors supply.

The movie veers from cleverness to crass stupidity. You can never tell whether the next scene will induce loud laughter or contempt; for me, Dodgeball divided right down the middle.

Watching them, you realize how far computers still have to go in accurately depicting the play of muscles as beasts run, crouch and leap. Though Annaud doesn't cut to them for cute reaction shots, as weak directors do, the tigers show near-human fears and affections.

The 23-year-old Evans has been acting just four years, and his near-anonymity makes him well-cast: He's an Everyslacker breezing through life in Santa Monica, the kind of guy who could turn into a hero under the right circumstances or remain a zero the rest of his life.

The Son's Room refers to every room this family will inhabit for a long time -- he's an unseen, ubiquitous presence -- but they may learn to lead ordinary, even joyful lives again.

A safe same-sex movie the family can embrace. At heart, it's a Britcom: a British situation comedy with superficial characters, mildly naughty humor and a familiarity that may make even homophobes comfy.

Like the star's acting, the movie is bland, full of good intentions and generally as stiff as a fireplace poker.

The special effects, with one painful exception, hold up beautifully. But the people have no personalities, the story is unconvincing, and the whole movie is as shallow as the puddle left on a flat roof by a 20-minute shower.

The usually quiet Zellweger is the revelation: Like her character, the actress seems happily amazed to find herself crossing a polished dance floor, sheathed in silk and diamonds, having the naughty, self-glorifying time of her life.

The plot's as thin as a debutante's cigarette case.

Eventually, though, the movie turns into a "Touched By An Angel" knockoff that dares us not to reach for a hankie while we succumb to its comforting message.

The film isn't quite as striking as its star, but it's just as honest.

I also wondered how the movie got the title Cradle 2 the Grave. Nobody used the phrase; it didn't apply to any characters; it didn't even turn up in a song. Maybe the filmmakers were saving "Rotten 2 the Core" for the sequel.

(Mendes') film debut shows he can shock not only with noise and nakedness but with subtle observations.

What surprises us most is the picture's topicality, and not just because terrorists crashed a plane into the Pentagon three years ago.

It's a gentle look at people who cut themselves off from others and realize consequences too late. If Southern Baptists believed in karma, this would be their touchstone.

A thriller that's frequently implausible but almost always thoughtful. It asks us to rethink the way we see Muslims

No one associated with the film tries very hard, from cinematographer Peter Deming -- San Francisco has never looked so drab -- to composer Mark Isham, whose watery jazz score is meant to summon melancholy but merely relieves insomnia.

Maybe Hollywood has used this "uptight guy liberated by free spirit" idea too many times. Either way, this is a form of recycling that no longer pays off. [9 May 1997, p.1E]

It's watchable, due to the rotoscoping technique...It's also as lightweight as the smoke rings blown by one of many perverse, dull characters.

The most sophisticated and satisfying ghost story on film since "The Sixth Sense."

Good idea for a movie about rebellious Asian Americans doesn't fully pan out.

The casting is weaker this time. Watching Peck crumble under fear and doubt was like seeing a skyscraper implode; Schreiber's more of a whipped puppy for most of the film.

Starts as a tart little lemon drop of a movie and ends up as a bitter pill. I'm glad to have seen it, for I appreciated Campbell Scott's dominant performance and Jesse Eisenberg's breakthrough. But I hope writer-director Dylan Kidd mixes less acid into the next drink he pours.

This fairy-tale quality gives director Clooney, who's making his debut behind the camera, his stylistic clue. He's in perfect sync with writer Kaufman; they treat even the most "serious" scenes like Monty Python routines.

Outdated before it opened today.

Without Essel, this might have been a run-of-the-mill dark comedy. With the 86-year-old British thespian, it's a wickedly funny and audacious movie in which she puts her capable co-stars in the shade.

Goodman exudes doltish kindness, Dillon a hapless gentleness, Reiser a vulgar buoyancy. Douglas turns in the best performance.

Chaotic, sometimes funny.

You can't root for Ronnie. You can't identify with him. You can't hope he gets the girl – any girl. But you may want to look on with stunned fascination as he ticks away, ready to explode.

This is one of the few recent westerns that requires you to keep your eyes open and memory engaged.

The giddiest and funniest animated film of the year.

If you really must see Miami Vice (and you mustn't), buy a ticket to something better, then slip into "Vice" at the 95-minute mark and watch the last third of the movie. No one involved will profit by your curiosity, and you won't miss a thing of importance.

Most of Meet the Robinsons plays like a movie made by ADD adults for ADD children.

The picture brims over with ideas - good ones, silly ones, maudlin ones, witty ones, absurd ones - and they bump up against each other like ingredients in a vast stewpot that never comes to a continuous boil.

A better-than-average thriller. That's a tribute to director Harold Becker and stars Bruce Willis and Alec Baldwin, who stretch the script's one idea almost to its breaking point. [3 Apr 1998, p.8E]

The sequel to the 2008 hit “Twilight” makes no effort to satisfy outsiders. It's strictly for devotees who won't balk at plot absurdities, clunky dialogue and patchy characterizations.

Picks up steam from the ominous opening scene and ends as a quietly suspenseful thriller.

It flies apart when it clumsily introduces humor at a funeral or an application for death benefits.

Partly a travelogue for the Greek islands, partly a simplistic love story, and generally a rehash of the Oscar-winning "Mediterraneo," as if we needed even the first one.

Soderbergh and writer Ted Griffin added plot twists that will catch you off-guard, dumped the clever ending and worked in a love story that's as superfluous as elevator shoes on Shaquille O'Neal.

Movies about artists play fast and loose with truth, but this is a hoot.

A frantic, heartless hodgepodge of pieces from James Bond movies, Indiana Jones adventures, "Star Wars" and half a dozen legends.

The picture's consistently entertaining and, though it has few brilliant comic peaks, it never plunges into boring valleys.

King Kong, a labor of love that's visually stunning and moving in its best moments, is also bloated, shallow, clunky, full of illogical scenes and at least an hour too long.

Li plays haughty, brilliant wushu master Huo Yuanjia, whose recklessness leads to tragedy after he becomes a champion at the end of the 19th century.

Looks as if it were thrown together as carelessly as slum housing.

A typical shallow caper film. Just assume the truth is the exact opposite of what's happening.

Pixar's employees, masters of computer-generated animation, capture the look of the ocean like no artists before.

Will dazzle you while establishing the world in which it takes place. After that, you may wonder whether Guillermo del Toro got amnesia halfway through.

This movie is an act of hubris so huge that, in Alexander's time, it would draw lightning bolts from contemptuous gods. Today it will get sniggers from stunned critics and a collective yawn from a public unlikely to share Stone's egomania.

Whatever you think of Melinda and Melinda, you have to admire Woody Allen for this: After years of criticism that he didn't use people of color in films, he's written two interracial romances.

The lack of attacks lets us concentrate on emotions rather than explosions.

The film's as chaotic and heavy-handed as "Summer of Sam" without the same sense of harsh reality.

Excruciatingly flat comedy.

Most of the time the movie limps amiably toward its feeble conclusion.

The writer-producer-director of American Dreamz makes nearly every mistake in the satirical book. His targets are either too easy or too dated. He's inconsistent in his attitudes toward them. His stereotypes are stale.

Babbit clumsily underlines emotional moods.

Plusses and minuses work out about evenly, if you compare the sequel to "Sorcerer's Stone." The three young leads act with more assurance; Radcliffe emerges as a leader, rather than one leg of a triangle. (Too bad he no longer expects to make all seven of the proposed pictures.)

The film offers an unusually rounded picture of a Latino family. All the men work, getting up early to do blue-collar jobs that demand dedication and responsible behavior. (We don't see much of them, but they have a strong presence in the household.)

Gilbert sets up a rhythm, telling the story in short scenes that proceed at a relaxed pace. The film never hurries, but it moves forward constantly. [26 Jun 1998, p.10E]

As a movie, it's a mixed bag with a huge amount of heart.

A marginally above average crime caper with one big plot twist that's pretty tough to believe but mildly interesting to consider.

Bay's movie couldn't be more timely; whatever you think about this subject, you might admire his attempt to come to grips with it in a summer blockbuster.

Somewhere inside "School" lurks a heartwarming or hilarious movie, perhaps both.

I can't explain the film's main problem without giving plot points away; suffice to say that, after decades of watching Earth, Klaatu's team of observers has missed a crucial event you and I witness every day. I can tell you about the secondary problem, though: too much money.

Mottola also wrote the screenplay, which is most fresh and honest when dealing with supporting characters.

Would you feel anxiety or remorse if you pulled the trigger on Osama bin Laden, however satisfying or even necessary it might be? Munich argues that finding him in our rifle sights would leave any of us a different person.

A Kafkaesque series of interwoven stories that depict the hopeless lives half the populace there (Iran) must lead.

It's watchable from start to finish, despite lapses in common sense, and it boasts a terrific cast of over-40 actors.

Anyone who enjoys the novels of Ed McBain, the Oscar-winning "All the President's Men" or any televised variation of "CSI" will be at home here.

Just Will Ferrell doing the same man-boy shtick he usually does.

A feel-nothing movie – a series of disconnected, implausible incidents that end as arbitrarily as they began, in an effort to inspire emotions the picture never justifies.

Good acting from the three principals – four, if we count Max Thieriot as the son – keeps this leaky craft afloat for quite a while.

If you like films short, sweet and soothing, this may be exactly your "Dish."

To adapt it for a 130-minute movie, Irving ruthlessly cut away subplots, eliminated supporting characters and pared down the traits of the ones that remain.

Handsome and competently acted and prettily shot and all the other things critics say when what they really want to scream is "Aaaaaaaargh! No more Jane Austen adaptations, ESPECIALLY not Pride and Prejudice.

A smooth, often funny, occasionally thoughtful romantic comedy.

(The filmmaker) never does achieve the breakthrough with her father that she and we hoped for.

Like the story, Kline builds in intensity: He has no flowery speeches that would be untrue to his character, but he leaves a clear impression of a man who values knowledge and the imparting of it above all else.

The yarn itself is a winning one.

“Blood” may carry us into the past, but the unhappy effects linger today, like pollution darkening a sky that never turned completely blue.

Turn a potentially unforgettable movie into a broad crowd-pleaser that sustains itself on three acting performances.

Worthwhile IMAX look at the ways nations cooperated to build Space Station Destiny, and what they hope to achieve.

Nicholson operates in full-bore demonic mode in Anger Management, eclipsing gentle star Adam Sandler and satisfying everybody who's been waiting for Hollywood's Wild Man to cut loose once more.

By refusing to take anything seriously (including himself), Shatner lifts the movie to a truly funny level of absurdity. Soon, though, it goes back to being the type of buddy picture Hollywood stamps out like stale cookies.

Yi Yi is an intimate movie, for all its length and complexity.

Writers Pamela Falk and Michael Ellis aim for the soufflé-style comedy audiences ate up greedily 40 years ago, but the film falls flat.

I do wonder why a gay director's best-known movies about straight guys, Talk to Her and "Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!," suggest that satisfying relationships with women are most easily achieved if they're 1) unconscious or 2) in bondage.

These pros lift this button-pushing blob of faux folksiness to a higher plane than it deserves.

The casting of Daniels, Tyson and Saint, all of whom underplay effortlessly, was shrewd.

Unimaginative.

Most of the actors keep an icicle-stiff upper lip except for Winslet, who darts around like a finch with a beak full of sunflower seeds, and Burrows, who exudes a musk of refined sexiness.

It's bombastic, chaotic, plodding, visually dreary and patchily written.

Gone Baby Gone would be an accomplishment with anyone at the helm; from a first-timer, it's a revelation.

Defies logic, the laws of physics and almost anyone's willingness to believe in it. But darned if it doesn't also keep us riveted to our seats.

Lee sleepwalks through his part, even in romantic scenes with equally bland Cameron Richardson.

Green knows how to convey a mood visually and develop tension with his camera. He just doesn't give people enough interesting things to say or know when to shut them up.

Like virtually all fish stories, it's discursive, funny, full of boasting, a suspect mix of truth and lies with an emphasis on the latter.

Jon Favreau, J.K. Simmons, Thomas Lennon and half a dozen other capable comedians drift in and out. Yet the movie seems long even at 105 minutes.

Mature folks may wonder why a simple and simply beautiful story from their youth has been buried under layers of emotion Woody Allen's psychiatrist might want to pick over.

Lawrence plus latex equals laughs.

Not even the repeated sight of Jessica Alba in a bikini, the camera caressing her like the eyes of a strip-club patron, can lift this leaden refuse off the ocean floor.

Everyone's entitled to a slump, and this is only the first blah film in five for Guest.

Reason to make Shrek the Third: Probable earnings of $400 million worldwide. Reasons not to make Shrek the Third: Played-out characters. Bland villain. Novice directors. Slipshod plotting. No compelling story or emotional depth.

It takes place on both sides of the U.S./Mexico border, and it offers an undeniable argument that life without love is unpalatable on either side.

Doesn't reveal all its layers until you've taken the last bite.

95 breezy minutes that typify cotton-candy filmmaking.

For all the silliness, Kaufman is posing a serious question: Are we better off forgetting things that brought us pain, especially if we didn't change or grow as a result? You may not agree with his conclusion, but who else in Hollywood would pose this query at all, or explore it in such a daffy, gratifyingly inventive way?

Trumping its predecessor with a tauter plot, a lower body count and just as many edge-of-the-seat jolts.

Flaccid remake of a tough 1966 original.

Eisele and Washington lacked faith in their material. So they've made the big debate opponent not USC but Harvard, a more clear-cut epitome of the white world of privilege that has to face the hard truths of racial equality.

It's not only an ultraviolent, ludicrously inconsistent rip-off of Bradbury's idea, but it poisons the well for future efforts.

Despite juggled storytelling, the movie's compelling.

We get pleasure watching two sets of likeable, convincing actors move toward their foreordained futures. The film's affecting ending proves familiarity needn't breed contempt, after all.

For the first time since "X-Men," I was on the edge of my seat anticipating a sequel, wondering who'd play the Joker and how quickly Nolan - it must be Nolan! - can bring the next chapter of this story to the screen.